Murdoch found dead: a fauxbituary

The year is 2022. Keith Rupert Murdoch, who arguably held
more power in America, Britain and Australia far longer than any
other figure over the past half century - only to see his great
empire crumble in his final years - died yesterday in Palm Beach,
where he had been living in reluctant retirement.

Born
in 1931, Murdoch, scion of one of the most important families in
Australia, was a lone gun who, having assumed command of the
Adelaide newspaper left to him by his father, swept through the
rest of his country buying papers and television stations. He then
went on to Britain, where, within a few years he was the country's
most significant and feared publisher, and then to America, where
he revolutionised the media industry.

He divided the world cleanly between "us" (the people who worked
for him and who did his bidding) and "them" (his competitors, his
ideological opponents, those he considered the Establishment or the
elite, and almost anyone outside his city-state company, News
Corporation). The result of this us-and-them view was a mutual
enmity that grew over the 60 years that he ran News Corp. Indeed,
his hold on power was fostered by this view of the world. If he
regarded you as on his side, or helpful to him, he rewarded you; if
not, his papers punished you - indeed, often actively sought your
ruin.

In the end it was this ethos that, when details emerged of how
reporters at one of his papers, the News Of The World, systematically hacked
the phones of celebrities and others, helped assure his downfall.
Those he had punished took advantage of his weakness; those he
rewarded had an excuse no longer to grovel before him.

In a sense, his tragedy was that time caught up with him. Many
of the things that his papers were investigated for were just part
of behaviour that he had long encouraged and that had made his
business powerful. Only now, with newspapers in decline - and with
so many voices on the internet lashing back at him - his papers
were no longer able to mount their former level of devastating
counterattack. And, even more damaging, his American company was no
longer interested in newspapers or the news business he loved. In
the end, he was quite alone.

His greatest hope, to be able to bequeath a dynasty - and, not
least of all, through his children, to continue to control his
company, from the grave, as it were - was dashed during the last
bitter months of the scandal when his son and designated heir,
James, was sentenced to two years in prison. His other adult
children, son Lachlan and daughters Prudence and Elisabeth were
estranged from the company and from each other.

And yet even the last calamitous years of his rule cannot
overshadow his impact on news and journalism, on business, on the
politics of three nations and on the figure he cut traversing the
globe.

Shy and yet aggressive, full of opinions and yet inarticulate, a
populist and yet an Australian princeling, a prude and yet a
tabloid publisher, a dedicated family man and yet married three
times and always on the road, Murdoch used News Corporation as the
vehicle with which to work out his conflicts.

Indeed, News Corporation, while a public company, became, most
of all, his individual power base, the avatar of his quixotic,
risky, quite often foolish, but, on balance, brilliant and
transformative instincts.

And they were instincts; Murdoch was famous for resisting
planning and the kind of bureaucratic and cumbersome strategic
second-guessing that marks most corporations the size of News Corp.
His march across 60 years of business, the effective conquest of
three nations, and the global tentacles he extended into virtually
every developing market, were often the result of happenstance and
spur-of-the moment decisions. He made it up as he went along. He
grabbed opportunities because he could. He bought the News Of
The World in 1968 and the Sun in 1969 because he
could afford them - and, in the case of NOTW, because he
was able to trick the owners into selling (he promised them
continued employment and then fired them promptly). His first
American papers were in Texas because that's where papers were
available. He bought the television stations that became the anchor
of his Fox Network (the fourth network, which no one
ever thought could be created) with a handshake at dinner.

Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff is a contributing editor for British GQ and Vanity Fair. He is also a columnist for USA Today, the author of four books and the founder of Newser.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Michaelwolffnyc